That figure reflects a CAGR of nearly 41% from $6.5 billion in 2016, with total forecast period revenues exceeding $193 billion, said the outlet.

According to Maxine Most, Acuity Principal and lead analyst, "The potential for consumer use of mobile biometrics dwarfs any previous application of biometrics. More than 1.9 billion biometrically enabled mobile devices will be in circulation by the end of 2017. This will grow to an unprecedented 5.5 billion devices by 2022 as this massive, globally available platform remains the driving force behind worldwide biometric adoption."

Acuity projects that by 2020, biometrics will be standard on 100% of the nearly 2.4 billion mobile devices sold each year. By 2022, 98% of all mobile devices will be biometrically enabled generating 16.7 billion biometric app downloads and more than 1.37 trillion payment and non-payment mobile devices transactions that require some level of biometric authentication.

"As the Equifax debacle and fallout goes viral on social media, and Apple once again redefines the biometrics landscape with the introduction of 3D FaceID on the iPhone, the casualties of inadequate digital security mount and drive demand for better identity solutions," says Most, a biometric identity expert with more than a dozen years of intensive focus on this now burgeoning marketplace.

"Mobile biometrics are just beginning to address the digital identity challenge. To date, biometrics have been widely adopted as a convenient PIN alternative for unlocking smartphones. By 2018, the introduction of hardened mobile biometric security and the emergence of Biometrics Identity Service Providers (BISPs) will shift market focus from on-device authentication to Cloud-based, server-side solutions that will begin to replace traditional digital identity schemes altogether," Most says.